School Overcomes Lawsuit

Panel Rejects Lauderhill Appeal To Block Building Of Elementary

An appeals court appears to have cleared the way for a long-awaited elementary school in Lauderhill that would alleviate crowding at six nearby schools.

The Broward School Board has been trying since 1989 to buy a 12-acre tract near Oakland Park Boulevard and Inverrary Boulevard, but the city sued to block the sale.

City officials and neighbors in the Inverrary subdivision said the site would force students to cross busy Oakland Park Boulevard.

Black activists said that Inverrary's residents didn't want a nearby school that would attract primarily minority children. They said city officials were bowing to their political clout. City officials and Inverrary residents have denied that allegation.

After losing in circuit court last year, the city appealed to the 4th District Court of Appeal in West Palm Beach.

``As a result of this opinion, the legal hurdles have been removed to build a school there,'' said Henry Latimer, an attorney for Baytree of Inverrary Realty Partners, which owns the site.

City commissioners have not discussed the ruling yet, but Mayor Alice Reiter Feld said she doubted they would continue to file legal objections.

``Clearly, we're disappointed. And clearly, we don't agree,'' she said on Friday.

City and school officials continue to discuss building the school on another site, she said.

City officials asked school officials last year to consider land at Northwest 25th Street and Northwest 56th Avenue, near The Circle condominiums.

School officials objected to The Circle site because they said it was too isolated, would burden narrow streets and was too close to Royal Palm Elementary.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has agreed, saying The Circle site was in a predominantly black neighborhood and would do nothing to advance desegregation.

A school has been planned for the Baytree site since 1989 under the working title of elementary school X. The school was to ease crowding at Lauderhill Paul Turner, Royal Palm, Tamarac, Village, Castle Hill and Castle Hill Annex elementaries. Together, those schools have 5,000 students.

Almost immediately, city officials and condominium residents in adjacent Inverrary protested.

The resulting dispute stalled the project for so long that money originally earmarked for elementary school X was used to build Tradewinds Elementary in Coconut Creek.

In 1994, the School Board voted to buy 12.1 acres from Baytree for $2.75 million on the condition that the owner obtain the city's approval. When the city blocked the sale, Baytree sued the city.

The case went to trial in the closing days of 1996, and a judge ruled in favor of the sale in January 1997. The City Commission appealed the decision in March.